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Chapter 31 Logical Positivism and the Scientific Conception of Philosophy

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Chapter 31 Logical Positivism and the Scientific Conception of Philosophy Aspects of Western Philosophy: Dr. Sreekumar Nellickappilly, IIT Madras Chapter 31 Logical Positivism and the Scientific Conception of Philosophy Key Words: Vienna circle, verification principle, positivism, tautologies, factual propositions, language analysis, rejection of metaphysics, practical verifiability, verifiable in principle, strong verifiability, weak verifiability, unified science This chapter discusses one of the very significant developments the 20th century European philosophy has witnessed; logical positivism, which is also known as neo empiricism. Again, like many other such initiatives in philosophy like existentialism, logical positivism is not a school of philosophy, with certain central doctrine, a definite conception of reality or a theory of knowledge. It is rather a movement that reflects the dominant scientific outlook of 20th century European civilization and its extension to all spheres of life. The logical positivists thus advocated a unique conception of knowledge which considered the scientific model as paradigm. They thus opposed metaphysics which aims at going beyond the sensible world and contemplating about transcendental realities. According to them metaphysics is a bad science. They were tremendously influenced by many philosophical approaches, notably, the positivism of Augustine Comte, the logical atomism of Bertrand Russell, and most significantly, by the peculiar conception of language and meaning developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his early work, the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. The fact that almost all major advancements in knowledge have been in the field of natural sciences have prompted the logical positivists to consider scientific conception of knowledge as paradigmatic. They found that the theories of speculative philosophy advocated by different thinkers were merely personal interpretations about reality. Most importantly, these theories were not empirically verifiable and hence it is impossible to establish their truth or falsity. The logical positivists affirm that these theories are not more than poetical or emotional reactions to the world and none of them represent knowledge like science. On the other hand, science Aspects of Western Philosophy: Dr. Sreekumar Nellickappilly, IIT Madras provides a totally different picture. It approaches reality and life from a different perspective. The story of humanity has never been the same after enlightenment, which had witnessed the emergence of modern science. Ever since renaissance and scientific revolution happened in modern Europe, the applied sciences have tremendously changed human life. Following Wittgenstein who declared that philosophy is not a science, and there are no philosophical theories, the logical positivists too have affirmed that philosophy does not contribute to the increase of human knowledge. 20th century philosophy was characteristically different from the philosophical thinking of early centuries. Earlier, philosophy was the handmaid of theology and with the civilization turning more and more towards science, the 20th century philosophy has become a handmaid of science. In this context, the major task of philosophy consists in the logical clarification of language. The philosopher is concerned with the clarification of the meaning of words and is also keen to show what words denote in terms of immediate experience. Logical positivism was a prominent philosophical initiative that took 20th century thinking in this direction. There are several factors—historical, cultural, intellectual—that contributed to the development of logical positivism. We shall now examine some of them. The Emergence of Logical Positivism After the World War I, a group of intellectuals comprising of mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, began meeting in Vienna under the leadership of the German philosopher and physicist, Moritz Schlick. They primarily discussed the implications of recent developments in logic initiated by many thinkers like Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein. The advancements modern science made too had impressed them. They began contemplating about the possibility of a systematic reduction of human knowledge to logical and scientific foundations, as they believed, science alone is capable of providing universal and certain knowledge. Since they were guided by the methodological approaches adopted by the natural sciences, they emphasized materialism, empiricism, philosophical naturalism and the scientific method. The most notable members of the Vienna Circle were Moritz Schlick, Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Aspects of Western Philosophy: Dr. Sreekumar Nellickappilly, IIT Madras Philipp Frank, Kurt Grelling, Hans Hahn, Carl Gustav Hempel, Victor Kraft, Otto Neurath and Friedrich Waismann. Logical Positivism formally began in 1929 with the publication of a manifesto entitled The Vienna Circle; Its Scientific Outlook, jointly written by Carnap, Neurath and Hahn. This pamphlet gave a brief account of the philosophical position of the thinkers associated with the group and a review of the problems in the philosophy of mathematics and of the physical and social sciences that they were chiefly concerned to solve. One of the most important features of logical positivism was the advocacy of the principle of verification, which states that, in order to be meaningful a statement needs to be empirically verifiable, though ironically, this statement itself is not verifiable. As mentioned above, the logical positivists were influenced by many factors that contributed in determining the social and cultural life of 20th century Europe. One of the primary influences was the empiricism of Hume, Comte, Mill, Avenarius and Mach. The modern developments in formal logic were another significant intellectual inspiration as the logical techniques developed by Frege, Peano and Russell were widely employed by the logical positivists in their analysis of language. Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics were other factors that influenced their thinking. But the single most important influence was Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, to which they developed their own unique reading and interpretation. The logical positivists adopted uncompromising positivism and proposed a blanket rejection of metaphysics. They had immense respect for scientific method and logical analysis, and they believed that in so far as philosophical problems are genuine at all they can be definitely solved by logical analysis. Being faithful to the empiricist tradition, it was natural for the logical positivists to be influenced by the radical empiricist philosophy of David Hume. Subsequently, they have rearticulated Hume’s division of Relations of Ideas and Matters of Facts as tautologies and factual propositions. They maintain that all sensible propositions fall under these two categories. Therefore, according to the logical positivists sentences that are neither tautologies nor factual are not propositions. The theory of verifiability is proposed in this context, which came to be identified as the hallmark feature of the logical positivists. Aspects of Western Philosophy: Dr. Sreekumar Nellickappilly, IIT Madras Logical Positivism and the Question of Meaning Like many others who consider language analysis constituting the core of philosophy, the logical positivists too have treated language analysis as vital. According to them, there are different types of meaningful statements. There are analytic a priori statements that are true or false by virtue of their meaning or logical form. When the truth and falsity of statements are ascertained by experience, they are known as synthetic a posteriori. Therefore, they contend that the meaning of a proposition is known if we know the method by means of which we verify it. In other words, we know the meaning if we know the conditions under which the statement is true or false. This is the celebrated verification principle. Logical positivists carry out their rejection of metaphysics by employing the verification principle as a criterion for meaningfulness. Metaphysical propositions, obviously are not verifiable, as they are not about what is the case in the world. Subsequently, they argue that many metaphysical utterances are due to the commission of logical errors. They begin their analysis with an examination of statements that express the so- called metaphysical truths. They explore from what premises the metaphysicians deduce their propositions, as they too need to begin, as other men do, with the evidence of their senses. Accordingly, the logical positivists wonder what valid process of reasoning can possibly lead the metaphysicians to the conception of a transcendent reality. As A. J. Ayer says, the traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. He then asserts that the surest way to end them is to establish beyond question 'what should be the purpose and method of a philosophical inquiry?’ [Language Truth and Logic, p.1] Rejection of Metaphysics and Language Analysis The logical positivists reject metaphysics in a characteristically different manner than many others who ventured doing so. For instance, Immanuel Kant had demonstrated that metaphysics as a science is impossible. He treated the impossibility of metaphysics as a matter of fact and he attempted to draw a limit to our thinking. On the other hand, Wittgenstein, who followed a method rooted in language analysis attempts to draw the line in language. He maintains that, in order
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